Meet Shire – 2018 FOYA Facility Integration Category Winner

Winners in this category exemplify the application of good design practices and superior conceptual planning which led to excellent integration of facility and process, yielding efficient, clean, pleasant environments promoting business advantages for staff and enterprise, encouraging excellent processing outcomes. Synergistic merging of process and building to create environment of form and functional excellence.

Shire, a leading global biotechnology company, strives to develop best-in-class products across several core therapeutic areas. With more than 7,000 identified rare diseases, only 5% of which have an available treatment, Shire employees come to work every day with a shared mission - to develop and deliver breakthrough therapies for the hundreds of millions of people in the world affected by rare diseases and other high-need conditions, and who lack effective therapies to live their lives to the fullest. Several products developed by Shire to treat rare diseases are derived from human plasma, which has led Shire to operate one of the largest plasma fractionation sites in the world at their Los Angeles campus.

The campus sits in a light industrial zone within the City of Los Angeles (CoLA), bordering the City of Glendale and is comprised of 8 buildings and a parking structure. Building 8 was the largest part of the Los Angeles Master Plan (LAMP) program and the team found that constructing a brand-new purification facility on the site with ongoing manufacturing operations, which continued during construction, made the project very unique and provided great opportunities for creativity and innovation.

The 11.6 acre site for the campus had undergone a number of building expansions and modifications over the years and with almost no unused space at the beginning of conceptual design for LAMP, attention to detail was essential. Building 8, the new 120,000 ft2 purification facility, is located on a campus with space constraints in every direction (north, south, east, west, elevation and excavation) and Hazardous Occupancy (H3) limitations which compressed the building layout to two above ground floors. The land was full of underground utilities such as electrical power distribution lines, main sewer line, and main site fire protection distribution water line and a 90,000-gallon underground water storage tank. In addition, the site had contaminated soil conditions due to previous use as a landfill. Prior to any excavation, Shire had to mitigate lead contamination in soil, while also relocating and rerouting underground utilities during previously planned annual plant shut downs.

The layout of the building was carefully planned to have the receiving dock directly across the driveway from the on-site warehouse and the utilities on the side of the building closest to the utility yard. Focus on facility integration was imperative to project success and optimizing operational efficiency. Some examples include the curving of the building for truck access while maximizing the footprint, creating alcoves with viewing windows in the hallways to keep people out of the traffic flow and designing each floor with 2 main corridors to keep personnel flow separate from material flow. Utility generation for the new building was kept in the central utility area so that only utility storage and distribution was required inside the building. Building 8 was specifically designed adjacent to, and wrapping around, the maintenance and office space building (Building 7) for easy access.

From technical construction challenges to managing noise levels for nearby residential communities, the team faced challenges that they successfully overcame. Despite the complexities of the project, all of the major milestones for LAMP Building 8 were achieved, due in large part to a committed and ethically driven team, thoughtful and compliant design practices, and advancements in construction technologies.

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